1GIT-DESCRIBE(1) Git Manual GIT-DESCRIBE(1)
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6 git-describe - Give an object a human readable name based on an
7 available ref
8
10 git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] [<commit-ish>...]
11 git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]
12 git describe <blob>
13
16 The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit.
17 If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is shown. Otherwise,
18 it suffixes the tag name with the number of additional commits on top
19 of the tagged object and the abbreviated object name of the most recent
20 commit.
21 By default (without --all or --tags) git describe only shows annotated
23 tags. For more information about creating annotated tags see the -a and
24 -s options to git-tag(1).
25 If the given object refers to a blob, it will be described as
27 <commit-ish>:<path>, such that the blob can be found at <path> in the
28 <commit-ish>, which itself describes the first commit in which this
29 blob occurs in a reverse revision walk from HEAD.
30
32 <commit-ish>...
33 Commit-ish object names to describe. Defaults to HEAD if omitted.
34 --dirty[=<mark>], --broken[=<mark>]
36 Describe the state of the working tree. When the working tree
37 matches HEAD, the output is the same as "git describe HEAD". If the
38 working tree has local modification "-dirty" is appended to it. If
39 a repository is corrupt and Git cannot determine if there is local
40 modification, Git will error out, unless ‘--broken’ is given, which
41 appends the suffix "-broken" instead.
42 --all
44 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref found in
45 refs/ namespace. This option enables matching any known branch,
46 remote-tracking branch, or lightweight tag.
47 --tags
49 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag found in
50 refs/tags namespace. This option enables matching a lightweight
51 (non-annotated) tag.
52 --contains
54 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find the tag
55 that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. Automatically
56 implies --tags.
57 --abbrev=<n>
59 Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
60 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits, or as many digits as
61 needed to form a unique object name. An <n> of 0 will suppress long
62 format, only showing the closest tag.
63 --candidates=<n>
65 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as candidates
66 to describe the input commit-ish consider up to <n> candidates.
67 Increasing <n> above 10 will take slightly longer but may produce a
68 more accurate result. An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to
69 be output.
70 --exact-match
72 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the supplied
73 commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0.
74 --debug
76 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy being
77 employed to standard error. The tag name will still be printed to
78 standard out.
79 --long
81 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits and
82 the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. This is
83 useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name in
84 "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be a
85 tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will
86 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag
87 v1.2 that points at object deadbee....).
88 --match <pattern>
90 Only consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern, excluding
91 the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with --all, it also considers
92 local branches and remote-tracking references matching the pattern,
93 excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/" prefix;
94 references of other types are never considered. If given multiple
95 times, a list of patterns will be accumulated, and tags matching
96 any of the patterns will be considered. Use --no-match to clear and
97 reset the list of patterns.
98 --exclude <pattern>
100 Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern, excluding
101 the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with --all, it also does not
102 consider local branches and remote-tracking references matching the
103 pattern, excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/"
104 prefix; references of other types are never considered. If given
105 multiple times, a list of patterns will be accumulated and tags
106 matching any of the patterns will be excluded. When combined with
107 --match a tag will be considered when it matches at least one
108 --match pattern and does not match any of the --exclude patterns.
109 Use --no-exclude to clear and reset the list of patterns.
110 --always
112 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
113 --first-parent
115 Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
116 This is useful when you wish to not match tags on branches merged
117 in the history of the target commit.
118
120 With something like git.git current tree, I get:
121 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
123 v1.0.4-14-g2414721
124 i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, but
126 since it has a few commits on top of that, describe has added the
127 number of additional commits ("14") and an abbreviated object name for
128 the commit itself ("2414721") at the end.
129 The number of additional commits is the number of commits which would
131 be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". The hash suffix is "-g" +
132 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit of parent (which was
133 2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6). The "g" prefix stands for
134 "git" and is used to allow describing the version of a software
135 depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful in an
136 environment where people may use different SCMs.
137 Doing a git describe on a tag-name will just show the tag name:
139 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
141 v1.0.4
142 With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so the
144 output shows the reference path as well:
145 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
147 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b
148 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
150 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
151 With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the closest
153 tagname without any suffix:
154 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
156 tags/v1.0.0
157 Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be
159 longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your
160 Git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with 975b
161 that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not be
162 sufficient to disambiguate these commits.
163
165 For each commit-ish supplied, git describe will first look for a tag
166 which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always be preferred
167 over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will always be
168 preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match is found, its
169 name will be output and searching will stop.
170 If an exact match was not found, git describe will walk back through
172 the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which has been tagged.
173 The ancestor’s tag will be output along with an abbreviation of the
174 input commit-ish’s SHA-1. If --first-parent was specified then the walk
175 will only consider the first parent of each commit.
176 If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which has the
178 fewest commits different from the input commit-ish will be selected and
179 output. Here fewest commits different is defined as the number of
180 commits which would be shown by git log tag..input will be the smallest
181 number of commits possible.
182
184 Tree objects as well as tag objects not pointing at commits, cannot be
185 described. When describing blobs, the lightweight tags pointing at
186 blobs are ignored, but the blob is still described as
187 <committ-ish>:<path> despite the lightweight tag being favorable.
188
190 Part of the git(1) suite
191Git 2.18.1 05/14/2019 GIT-DESCRIBE(1)